1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to multicast transmissions in a network virtualization environment and, in particular, to scaling the number of broadcast domains utilized for multicast transmissions in a network virtualization environment.
2. Discussion of Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Sever virtualization is placing increasing demands on the physical network infrastructure. The number of MAC addresses available for utilization throughout the switched network may be insufficient to handle the potential attachment of the substantial increase in virtual machines (VMs), each with its own MAC address within the network.
In some environments, the VMs may be grouped according to Virtual LAN (VLAN) associates. In a data center, there may be thousands of VLANs to partition traffic according to specific groups that a VM may be associated with. The current VLAN limit of 4094 may be wholly inadequate in some of these situations. In some cases, the Layer 2 network may scale across the entire data center or between data centers for efficient allocation of compute, network, and storage resources. Using traditional approaches such as the Spanning Tree Protocol (STPP) for a loop free topology can result in a large number of disabled links.
Data centers host multiple tenants, each with their own isolated set of network domains. It is not economical to realize this type of structure over dedicated infrastructure for each tenant, and therefore shared networks are commonly utilized. Further, each tenant may independently assign MAC addresses and VLAN IDs leading to potential duplication on a physical network as a whole.
One of the functions that places a large burden on such a network is multicasting in network virtualization environments. Multicasting to a group of nodes across the network may not be easily available with the networking hardware available. Further, multicasting may overburden the network with traffic being directed through many branches and arriving at unrelated nodes unnecessarily.
Therefore, there is a need for network structures that allow for efficient usage of the physical network by multiple users each with multiple virtual machines.